Experts have asserted that this tactic is a gross violation of international law and that targeting civilian infrastructure, no matter the justification offered, is a war crime. Yet, Israeli authorities insist that it’s a legitimate tactic of war and helps deter future attacks on Israel by its enemies.rms and mosques.

Two years after the devastating 2006 campaign on Lebanon, the head of Israel’s northern command, Gadi Eisenkot, asserted that Israel will continue to use the strategy in future conflicts.

“What happened in [Dahiyeh]… will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on,” he said. “We will apply disproportionate force on it and cause great damage and destruction there. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages, they are military bases.”

Of course, the most severe display of the Dahiyeh Doctrine has been during Israeli’s ongoing genocidal campaign in Gaza. Since October 7, Israel’s apparent strategy of targeting Gaza’s civilian population and infrastructure with the full force of the military to try and deter Hamas has brought a catastrophe comparable only to the Nakba of 1948. In just a year, Israel’s military completely devastated all infrastructural and institutional bases of Palestinian civilian life in Gaza.

The global majority is of course deeply critical of Israel’s assaults on civilian infrastructure in Gaza and Lebanon. Yet, Israel’s partners in the West continue to support these efforts both materially and ideologically. Even when Israeli authorities outrageously claim that they are “escalating” their war efforts – meaning killing and maiming civilians and making their environments inhabitable – to “de-escalate”, they nod in approval.